In early 1918, officials came to Gerry Andrews’s school in Winnipeg, Manitoba to recruit Soldiers of the Soil (SOS). In April, he was sent to a wheat farmer in Purves, southwest of Winnipeg, appropriately named Frank Grain.

By 1917, there was a shortage of labour since the country’s priority was to have manpower overseas. Food rationing could only go so far. So, the Canada Food Board sponsored a nation-wide program to recruit high school students like Gerry Andrews as SOS for farm work.

Every day Andrews was out to the barn at 6 a.m. to take care of the animals, clean and do chores until 9 p.m. “A lifetime benefit of my SOS experience has been an understanding and love of horses,” Andrews wrote in an article that was published in the spring 1989 edition of Manitoba History.

After nearly six months of serving as an SOS—nearly double what his contract required—he had to return to Grade 10 by mid-September.

He received the bronze SOS badge and revisited the farm in 1987, which was now owned by Frank’s son, Bill. “My experiences at Purves as outlined surely contributed to any success in later life and to my enjoyment of it,” he also wrote in the 1989 article.

Do you have an ancestor who served in the Great War? Submit their story and it could be included on this Great War Album website.